


Loud as it could ever be

by partyghost (Arokel)



Series: Say What I Want [2]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: 90s-era Sunset Curve, Alex-centric (Julie and The Phantoms), Coming Out, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, bagel bites, but not so great by the standards of today, they talk about sex a little bit if that bothers you, what I would call pretty okay reactions from a bunch of 90s teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27872897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arokel/pseuds/partyghost
Summary: “Coming out is always terrifying. I knew the band was going to be chill and I still couldn’t say it. We had to play twenty questions.”Or; Alex comes out for like 4500 words and then stresses out aboutnotcoming out for another 2800.
Relationships: Alex & Luke Patterson & Reggie & Bobby | Trevor Wilson, Alex & Luke Patterson (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex & Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Mention of Alex/Willie
Series: Say What I Want [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040685
Comments: 36
Kudos: 211





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic basically bookends _When the world's older_ \- so this first chapter is pre-that, and the second chapter is post-that. Could I have planned this out better and made it all one fic? Yes, but I am bad at planning so this is what we're stuck with.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Alex thinks he might be about to die. And _no_ , he is _not_ being dramatic, _thank you_ , small version of Luke in his head. Even if his heartrate weren’t medically concerning, which he’s pretty sure it is, surely the amount he’s sweating is a dangerous sign. He could become dehydrated and pass out, and no one would know to look for him and then maybe one of those wild dog packs he heard about on the news would find his unconscious body, and –

“Is that Alex outside?”

Too late, Alex ducks. He still isn’t used to the three extra inches of height he gained over the summer, making him trip over his own feet and forget that his head now clears the small windows lining the door to the garage where the recently-dubbed Sunset Curve practices, betraying his presence to anyone inside.

That’s how he feels right now. Exposed, alone, under scrutiny. He’d fled to the garage in search of the safety and comfort of his friends, but now that he’s actually here, all he can think is that they’ll see him and _know._ The thing he’s tried so hard to hide, now blaring loud like a siren from his flushed cheeks and puffy eyes.

Coming out to his parents and his three best friends in almost one fell swoop is _not_ what he had planned for today.

This is stupid. He’s better than this cowering and crying. He’s snuck out to bars and clubs and met men like him, who showed him what it looks like to be happy with yourself. He, Alex, one-quarter of a quartet, has marched alongside a pride parade – not once, but twice – alone, in secret, but still surrounded by family.

And yet none of that self-confidence can propel him through this moment.

The door creaks open, and Alex flings himself against the low stone wall opposite it, stuffing his hands in his pockets in an approximation of the _aw-shucks-who-me-hiding-something_ carelessness he’s perfected over the years, an armor no one, not even his closest friends, has managed to pierce.

“Alex? Hey, it is you. What are you doing just standing outside? Bobby brought bagel bites but our hands are all too greasy to open the bag; we need you.” Reggie manages to make it almost all the way through his greeting without noticing the misery and anxiety Alex is so sure must be radiating off him like visible light. It’s only so long, though, before he comes to the conclusion Alex knew he would, eventually. “Have you been crying?”

Alex’s hands twitch in his pockets with the traitorous instinct to scrub at his red, telltale eyes. He clenches them into fists. “No.”

“Really? Then you should probably get your eyes looked at, because you’ve got some serious –“

“Reg, what’s taking so long? We need your feminine hands for – Alex?”

“I don’t have _feminine hands,_ ” Reggie grumbles, and Alex thinks hysterically that if this is the moment he has to say it, it might as well come on the heels of Reggie’s wounded masculinity. Nothing like knowing your best friend is gay to make you feel better about your own sexuality, probably.

It isn’t funny even in his head.

Alex unclenches his fist just enough to give Luke a feeble half-wave from within his jacket pocket. “Hey.”

“Dude, are you okay?” Luke says, starting forward. “I thought you were hanging with your folks today.”

Alex opens his mouth to say yes, he had been, until that all went horribly wrong and he came here instead because he hadn’t known where else to go. And that now he’s regretting it, because he’s already disappointed enough family members today.

“Shit, it _is_ Alex? You should’ve given us a heads-up, man, I’dve brought more snacks if I’d known you were gonna bail on the rents,” Bobby says, the third and final arbiter of Alex’s doom emerging from the garage to form a wall of concerned friends standing between Alex and safety.

He feels his throat closing up. “I didn’t bail.”

Luke laughs, darting forward to clap him on the shoulder. “Uh, yeah, you did? Dude, there’s no way your parents would let you skip Sunday lunch to come hang here.”

“Ergo: bailed,” Reggie adds, hooking his chin over Luke’s shoulder with an ease that wrenches at Alex’s already-tender nerves. Will Reggie ever do that with him again, after today, after he knows?

“They told me to come here,” Alex says, which is maybe a bit of a stretch. But _if you’re looking for congratulations, you’re going to have to find them somewhere else_ could sort of be a hint to head here, looked at charitably. More charitably than it was meant, probably.

“ _Are_ you okay?” Luke asks, leaning closer, nose almost brushing Alex’s as he searches for some sort of answer in Alex’s red-rimmed eyes. Alex thinks all he’ll probably find there is fear.

Suddenly, Alex is very cold, and the sparse plants of the sunken garden do nothing to shield him from the eyes of the street, and no, he is _not_ okay, and he just needs to be somewhere where no one can see him falling apart.

There kind of isn’t anywhere like that, though. His house is out; he can’t stomach the idea of slinking back home to hide in his room after slamming the door so spectacularly behind him on the way out. And even if he wanted to go to a club, which he doesn’t, none of the grown adults who pretend to humor him when he asks them to buy him drinks want to listen to him cry about his parents not being quite as nice as he wanted them to be.

No, when Alex has wanted to disappear, all the times before this when being _seen_ became too much, it’s always been here he disappeared to.

“Can we go inside?” he asks.

Reggie, Luke, and Bobby exchange worried glances.

“Sure, dude,” Bobby says. “Glad you’re here; we can use your pocketknife for the bagel bites since Luke’s mom confiscated his.”

“I gave it up willingly,” Luke says, a half-hearted protest, and he doesn’t even snap back when Bobby says, “yeah, so she wouldn’t ground you.”

They can all feel the tension, even if they don’t know why yet.

Alex watches the three of them disappear into the cavernous dimness of the garage and thinks that it looks like walking past the curtains, through the wings, and onto the stage. It’s about as nerve-wracking, too.

By the time he’s talked himself into following, they’ve already rearranged themselves in the positions they must have been in before he came: Luke perched on a shitty garage-sale camping chair, journal open to a scribbled-out page; Reggie luxuriating in having Luke’s slightly-less-shitty garage-sale couch to himself; Bobby reigning supreme over a pile of assorted snacks on the coffee table, fighting with a plastic bag of bagel bites.

“I have to tell you guys something,” Alex says, before he can chicken out.

“Your mom confiscated your pocketknife too,” Reggie guesses, dodging Luke’s smack.

Alex shakes his head. He doesn’t think he can make a joke out of it, now that he’s said it so seriously. Too late to back out. Only forward, now.

“Hey, don’t disrespect the best mom of all our moms in this garage,” Bobby says, eyeing Alex calmly over the bagel bites. Bobby is always calm, and that should calm _Alex_ down, but it’s only making things worse right now. “What’s up?”

And Alex knows, _knows_ that they’re a band, a family. But his mom is family, too, and that didn’t stop the _I won’t lie and tell you I’m happy_ still echoing in his ears, louder than the slammed front door or his dad’s _don’t you walk away from us while we’re –_

He laughs hollowly, empty even of the false cheer he usually manages to put on whenever he’s caught in the middle of worrying about this exact scenario. “Best mom, yeah.”

Luke jumps to his feet, advancing on Alex with a tiger’s prowl, inexorable and inescapable. “Dude, what is _up?_ You love your mom.”

“Yeah,” Reggie says, sitting up properly to watch Alex with a look of concern no less pinning than Luke’s intense stare. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”

“I have to tell you something,” Alex repeats.

Bobby sets down the bagel bites.

“Tell us, then.” It’s typical Luke, brash and cavalier, but in this moment it’s too close to a challenge. Alex finds himself backing up, unconsciously, until he registers both Luke’s distressed face and his own shoulders hitting the garage door. Luke’s brows draw down over his eyes and his lip twists in hurt, and he very pointedly turns his back on Alex to reclaim his seat. “Or, you know, don’t. Whatever.”

“We could guess,” Reggie offers. “Twenty questions?”

And yeah, okay, why not? That can’t be any worse than interrupting his dad’s snide remarks about the tightness of Reggie’s jeans with an ill-thought out _“I’m_ the gay one, dad.” It’ll probably go down easier if it’s framed as a lighthearted game.

Reggie takes Alex’s silence for consent. “Okay. Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

Alex’s brain stalls. “None of the above?”

“Are you sure? Because if it was animal I was going to guess those feral dogs I saw on the news the other day.”

“I don’t – why would I need to tell you about feral dogs if they were already on the news?” Alex says, baffled. Although Reggie is _kind of_ right, in that Alex was sort of tangentially thinking about the dogs, earlier. Maybe Reggie can read minds through stupid guessing games; this should go quickly, then.

Reggie is saying, “but you didn’t _know_ I knew they were on the news –“ when Luke, patience worn thin by Alex’s evasive, nervous energy, cuts him off.

“Are you quitting the band?”

“What? No.”

“Then what _is_ it?”

Reggie shakes his head in disbelief, like he’s ashamed to even be in the same room as Luke. “That is _not_ how you play twenty questions, dude.”

“Fine,” Luke says, settling back deeper into the camp chair and crossing his arms. “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

The situation is rapidly spiraling out of Alex’s control, but in a direction that’s more comedic than panicky, and that weird suspension of disbelief allows Alex to relax his high-strung nerves long enough to say, “metaphorically, yeah, I guess.”

It’s true, it _is_ big, and Luke must hear that, because suddenly he’s elbows-on-knees invested, game face on and questions coming rapid-fire. Reggie looks a little poleaxed.

“Is it something we already know?”

“No.”

“So no dogs, then,” Bobby says, shoving Reggie to one side of the couch so he can sit.

“No dogs.”

Reggie shoves back, but Bobby is stronger than he looks and it just results in Reggie overbalancing, collapsing into Bobby’s lap and catapulting himself towards the far end of the couch with a series of high-pitched, heterosexual apologies, which definitely does not make Alex feel any less anxious.

“That shouldn’t count as a question,” Reggie says, huffy, smoothing down his hair. “We’re still at three, even if Luke’s weren’t helpful.”

“You ask one then, genius.” Luke’s eyes don’t leave Alex’s. Alex looks away. “Is it about a person?”

“Yes.”

“Is that person you?”

Alex hesitates. “…Yeah.”

“Is it a bad thing?” Reggie asks, finally having settled down enough to realize that Alex is taking this game very, very seriously.

That, Alex can answer confidently, because it’s _not._ The response might not be what he hopes for, but Alex has spent far too much time working past far too much self-hatred to ever label his sexuality a _bad thing_.

“No.”

“Is it illegal? Are you in trouble?” Bobby asks, ever practical. “Illegal isn’t synonymous with bad,” he adds, silencing Reggie’s objection.

“No, and… not with the law.” He’s not in trouble with anyone, exactly, but the whole parents thing is definitely a situation he doesn’t know how to get himself out of.

Luke leans even further forward. “Is it why you’re not with your parents right now?”

Trust Luke to pick up on that one. Alex has always had a solid relationship with his family, but he’s seen the kind of chasms an ideological disagreement can open up, in Luke and Luke’s mom. Alex would give a lot to swap moms, right now. “Yeah.”

He can see them sifting through their memories of his parents, searching for something, anything that might stand out as a potential blot on their picture-perfect, WASP-y domestic bliss. Turns out Alex is that blot. Surprise.

Then Reggie narrows his eyes, and Alex remembers that they all used to think Reggie lived in domestic bliss, too, before the cracks in his parents’ marriage grew too large to hide even from three teenage boys. They had all silently, simultaneously decided to stop hanging out at Reggie’s house, even though Reggie had never said anything. “Have you tried to tell us before?”

“No.”

He’s always known he would have to, one day; he’s not the type of person who can keep such a huge part of himself secret from his friends forever. It’s been okay, mostly, because it’s just been _thoughts_ , but if he ever gets a boyfriend – and he would have to tell them before that happened, too, so they didn’t think he only told them just because of the boyfriend thing –

Bobby clocks it. Or he clocks _something_ , at least. “Are you _afraid_ to tell us? This isn’t your ‘I’m Alex, I get nervous about making big announcements because I don’t want to bother anyone’ thing, you’re actually afraid?”

“Harsh, dude,” Luke hisses, but then he, too, turns expectant eyes on Alex. Reggie looks guilty. Alex gets that; Reggie always hated whenever anyone tried to talk to him about his folks, and now he’s put Alex on the spot instead.

Except the difference is that Alex _does_ want to talk about this, wants it so desperately he almost aches with it. He wants to say, there’s this guy in physics who touches me sometimes, not the way you guys touch me but maybe more than normal and I don’t know what that _means_ and I’d really like a second opinion, or, I went to a club two weeks ago and a man hit on me before he realized I was sixteen, and it was creepy in the moment but his face when he clued in was really funny and I want to tell you all about it, everything, every part of me I’ve kept hidden for three years except for the part where I had a crush on each of you, individually, in order, but maybe even that part because that’s kind of funny too, but –

“Yeah. I’m afraid.”

Luke is starting to look nervous, notebook bouncing on his knee. He’s never handled Alex’s nerves well; this is a potentially terrible combination. “You know we’re – you know we’d have your back through anything, right?” he asks, hesitant.

“Yeah, for sure,” Alex says, too quickly, and he sees Luke’s face fall and knows it sounds like the lie it maybe is.

It’ll be okay in the end. He knows it will. He knows them well enough to know that they’re not going to be dicks about it. But they might be upset he didn’t tell them sooner, or they might be uncomfortable changing clothes in front of him, or –

“Would you have told us eventually?”

“Of course,” Alex says, no hesitation, just the right amount of quickly this time. No question about that. Just a question of _when._

Luke and Reggie share a look Alex can’t read. He thinks he sees flashes of the _he’ll tell us when he’s ready_ look he used to share with Luke when Reggie showed up tight-lipped and angry after family dinners, or maybe the _just pretend you can’t tell_ glances with Reggie when Luke breaks a string after a fight with his mom. He knows what’s coming.

But instead, Reggie says, “do you want to stop playing this game?”

And yeah, he does. He wants to say this on his own, when he’s ready, not just because he’s upset and looking for comfort. He wants to do it properly, with the kind of big declaration he usually shies away from, a big sign and streamers and maybe a cake.

“Yeah, kinda.”

And as the words leave his mouth, quiet and honest, he hears them drowned out, overlaid with Bobby’s “are you gay?”

There is a silence.

Alex could lie. He could say no, and no one would believe him, but they would drop it. They could go on like they have and pretend Alex never tried and failed to say anything.

Alex might be anxious, but he’s not one to back down from a fight. And he may have lied by omission countless times, but he hasn’t done it point-blank yet. Lying like that, to these guys, would say he has something to be ashamed of.

And Alex is so _over_ being ashamed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

The silence hangs for a beat longer before abruptly cascading into an explosion of noise, everyone talking at once in complete discord.

“ _Metaphorically bigger than a breadbox?_ What kind of clue is that?” Reggie accuses, and “oh, come _on_ ,” Bobby says, and “ _that’s_ your first reaction?” from Luke.

“ _All_ of your first reactions suck,” Alex says over the cacophony, a definitive, attention-grabbing cymbal crash.

“Sorry,” Reggie says, immediately chastened by raised voices like he always is. “You know we’re cool, though, right?”

“Yeah. Like I said, we’ve got your back,” Luke chimes in.

And then it’s awkward. Alex has never done this before, up until an hour ago when he watched his parents’ faces fall and knew that no matter how much they assured him they still loved him, he was now a _disappointment_ , and he doesn’t know a way to exit the conversation that isn’t a slammed door.

“Soooo,” Reggie says, drawing it out like he’s hoping someone else will think of something to say before he finishes the word, “you kiss dudes, huh?”

That’s not really any less awkward, honestly. “I mean, not currently?”

Bobby grins widely, reaching out a foot to kick the shitty metal leg of Luke’s chair and sending it juddering an inch closer to its eventual union with the ground. “ _Not currently_ , he says. You better catch up, Ladykiller Luke, or Alex is going to lose his virginity before you.”

“Unless he already has. Have you?” Reggie says, and the look on his face is maybe a little bit intrigued but definitely like ninety-five percent grossed out. But ninety-five percent is not one hundred percent, so Alex takes solace in that.

 _This_ he really didn’t want to talk about, and he kind of isn’t prepared to, either, because it’s not like he’s got any actual _experience._ So far his only options have been his bandmates, who are very much not options, and physics guy, who is also probably not an option even if Alex wants him to be. “No, I don’t – I’m not really – I mean, there’s no one – I’m trying to give Luke a fighting chance,” he says, because maybe if he sounds like he has any idea what he’s doing he’ll feel less like a scared kid.

“I don’t need any fighting chances,” Luke protests. “I can win on my own merits. And besides, you’re playing in a different league now, so it wouldn’t count anyway.” _A different league_ hits kind of unpleasantly, in the same way _batting for the other team_ always has, in its Other-ness. Luke sees it, or senses it, because he corrects himself. “But I guess the terms of the bet technically don’t say anything about gender.”

“They do not,” Reggie says, pointing needlessly to the torn-off scrap of a pizza box lid tacked to the wall beside the dartboard with the terms themselves laid out in Alex’s neat, sharpied handwriting. “Very sneaky, Alex.”

“Then the game’s still on,” Luke says, decisively, looking between the four of them. “As long as it’s not any of us, am I right, boys?”

So, probably not the time to mention the _all of you in sequence but most recently you, Luke_ part.

“Definitely not.”

“Always knew you had terrible taste, buddy. Alright, guys, bring it in. Group hug,” Luke says, winking at Alex and holding his arms out in invitation to the room as a whole. He sees Alex hesitate. “I know you’ve got your whole ‘no touch’ thing, Alex, but let it go just this once and accept a goddamn hug.”

And the thing is that Alex _doesn’t_ have a ‘no touch’ thing, would in fact love to be as casually affectionate as the rest of the band is with each other, but he made a vow to himself right around the time he first started noticing how pretty Reggie’s eyes are that he would never be the one to initiate that sort of affection, in preparation for the day when they all found out and started to wonder what he might have meant by it.

He thinks about confessing that, too, since he’s in a sharing mood, but Bobby punches him on the arm – a safe, masculine touch – and says, “if you’re going to grope anyone, grope Luke. He needs all the help he can get.”

“What the _hell_ , man,” Luke says. Alex can’t tell whose behalf he’s offended on.

So it turns out that he’s traded in one caution for another. His every touch, his every look is now under scrutiny, until he can convince them that he isn’t into them, that he would never try anything even if he was. Until then, it’s touch-averse Alex all the way. “I’m good.”

Luke kind of deflates, and Reggie shoots Bobby a look that isn’t entirely nice, but it’s too late. The joke was made.

Bobby either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. “So you told your parents? And it didn’t go well?”

Alex envies the way Bobby isn’t sentimental at all, just gets right to the heart of an issue. Reggie would have tried to put it delicately, and Luke would have talked circles around it, and Alex would have had to admit it on his own, which he doesn’t want. This way all he has to do is say yes.

“It went… I don’t know. It could have gone worse.”

That’s true, even if the way it did go still isn’t what he wanted. Alex isn’t kidding himself; he knows he lucked out to be just a _disappointment_ instead of a pariah. He left of his own accord, and when he goes back his parents will tell him they were worried about him, and they won’t talk about why.

It still hurts.

Luke looks uncomfortable, for just a minute. Alex knows he’s thinking about his own mom, how forgiving she is every time he gets up the courage to ask for it, and how differently things might have gone if Alex’s parents were like her. But then he rallies, throwing Alex a rakish grin and a “well, hey. Fuck parents, right? _We’re_ your family, and we love you just the way you are.”

“Billy Joel? Really?” Alex says. It doesn’t quite break the tension.

“It’ll be great for our image,” Reggie says. “A whiff of scandal makes us sexy. Look at Sleater-Kinney.”

 _That_ does. Luke makes an exaggerated gagging sound. “We are _not_ a riot grrrl band.”

Alex kind of _likes_ riot grrrl music, but he’s not about to say that immediately after coming out. Time to implement step one of his _I’m not going to grope any of you, I swear_ campaign. He scoffs. “I don’t think anything could make you sexy, Reg.”

“What the hell, dude?” Reggie says, sounding genuinely hurt, because Reggie’s mind works in strange and mysterious ways. “Just because you’re gay now you think you can just say hurtful shit like that?”

“Do you want me to tell you you’re sexy?”

“No! That’s weird. I want you to _think_ it, but keep it to yourself. I want you to dream about me.”

“That’s… pretty weird, Reg,” Luke says slowly. Reggie’s cheeks turn that blotchy red they always go when he’s trying to dig himself out of a hole, a color that Alex still finds kind of cute even now. Not that he’s about to tell Reggie that, who looks like he might pass out.

“Not like _dream_ dream, I just mean, like, _yearn_ , you know, I’d be his great white whale –“

Bobby reaches for the bagel bites again, wiping his hand on Reggie’s leg and tossing Alex a careless smirk. “Hey Alex, can you go back in the closet so Reggie will stop talking about his ass?”

“It’s a _literary reference,_ you _philistines –“_ Reggie starts, and with that, it’s over. They’ve moved on.

It’s a little disappointing. But he’s got his whole life ahead of him; he’ll get to say it again.

* * *

It’s like déjà vu: Alex is standing in front of the garage door, and he is terrified. Not because he almost just winked out of existence in an incredibly painful and permanent second death, although that was pretty nerve-wracking. No, he is terrified because he’s about to come out. Again.

Reggie and Luke have cleared out; Alex doesn’t know where. Celebrating their new freedom, probably. Or maybe they saw Willie skating up the street towards Julie’s house and figured it was time to make themselves scarce.

They’ve done the apology thing; mostly on Willie’s part but a little bit on Alex's. Alex knows what it’s like to do things you shouldn’t just for a taste of the kind of things straight people get to have without a second thought. If Willie is queer, which Alex isn’t about to assume, after all the weird conflicting signals he’s been giving off for the past few weeks.

But now they’ve gotten that out of the way, and Alex has something to say. On his own, this time, and without prompting.

“I don’t know how he got to you, but I don’t blame you for that, either,” he says, and it’s true. It wasn’t, a few days ago, but it is now. “He knew exactly what to say – what to show me – to tempt me. If I’d been alone, I would have taken him up on it.”

“What’s that?”

Willie knows. He must; his voice is too innocent to be genuine. He’s playing along, for Alex’s sake. That’s what you get for living your life openly, Alex supposes.

Alex laughs, knocking his elbow against Willie’s in silent thanks. “So, I’ve never really gotten do this whole confession thing, but – I’m gay. And I know you probably knew that, but I just wanted to say it.”

Willie knocks back.

“Yeah, I kinda did know. But – hey, Alex,” Willie says, a hand on Alex’s arm to draw his attention back when Alex tries to look away. He holds Alex’s gaze. “I’m really glad you told me.”

Hearing that feels pretty great.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly because the show thinks it's so sneaky with all those queer-coded lyrics they make Julie sing, and because Alex deserves to sing a couple of them too.

Alex stands apart as he has always done, in front of the dartboard, retracing the words of the bet. The sharpie has faded with time, bled and smudged where it met spots of grease. He harbored thoughts of winning it, once, of coming in triumphant, but his imagination always stalled on how he would explain it. Now his secret is out there, but his victory looks less likely, if he can barely come out to his friends. Physics guy is probably straight, and even if he isn’t there’s no way Alex will ever be able to ask.

Luke approaches him from behind. Reggie and Bobby are tuning; Luke declared that if they’re all here, they might as well rehearse, but Alex doesn’t really feel like it.

“Hey,” Luke says, coming to stand beside Alex, reading the pizza box or just tactfully not looking at him. “I’m sorry if that didn’t go how you wanted it to go.”

Alex looks sideways at him, startled. “No, it was great. You guys were great.”

And they were, they _are_ , even if Alex maybe would have liked to say it on his own. He’s always known they would be chill, but in spite of a few bumps in the road, they were so much better than he could have asked for. Especially in comparison to how his other coming-out went earlier today. He would never have thought, when he thought about telling them, that Bobby would use his sexuality to make _Reggie_ the butt of a joke. That’s great.

“Yeah, I know, but you didn’t really get to say it, you know? Sorry we stole your thunder,” Luke says with a shrug, demonstrating the two quintessential qualities of Luke: an absolutely _massive_ ego and an uncanny ability to know exactly what you’re trying not to let him see you’re feeling.

“Yeah, well,” Alex says, because he doesn’t know how he would dispute that. It’s true. “I’ll have plenty of other opportunities.”

Luke claps him on the shoulder, having said his piece and now ready to move on. Alex envies that ability to just… let things go. To stop worrying about things that have already happened. “That’s the spirit. My boy Alex, out and proud.” He pauses, hand still on Alex’s shoulder, suddenly more sincere than he usually is – more sincere than Alex is comfortable with at this moment in time, really. “And, hey. If you ever wanna say it onstage, I’ll write you a _kickass_ coming out song.”

Alex laughs, shrugging him off. “Maybe someday.”

* * *

Luke finds him that night, stood before the dartboard that has somehow miraculously survived all these years, incongruous against the soft lighting and the plants that really do brighten up the place. Alex’s life is made up of a lot of parallels these days.

“That’s not the face of a guy who just successfully asked out his crush.”

Alex pastes on a smile. He’s not as good at it as he used to be; living honestly has a way of wearing down your ability to lie. “Is this better?”

“Nice try, but no.” Luke drapes a casual arm over Alex’s shoulder, which he rarely did in life but has apparently decided is an acceptable touch now that they’re dead. Or now that Bobby isn’t here to make crude jokes, maybe. “I wonder what happened to that stupid bet.”

“Tossed, probably.”

“We all lost, anyway,” Luke says. Pauses. “Well, I guess Bobby won. That doesn’t feel great.”

Alex lets himself lean into Luke’s loose hold, just a little bit. He misses Bobby, sometimes. Sure, he was always a little aloof, a little bit less _one of them_ , but he was there when Alex was the most alone he’s ever been, and Alex can’t bring himself to forget that, no matter how angry he is. He would never say it aloud, but he can’t hate Bobby quite as much as Luke can.

“Yeah, but we’re still young and beautiful and he’s forty.”

Luke scowls, dropping his arm and spinning on the spot like he’s about to flop onto the nearest piece of furniture, before he remembers he came over in the first place to see if Alex was okay. He completes his spin to make an exaggeratedly woeful face at Alex. “Not much good if no one can _see_ us to sleep with us. Can ghosts even have sex?”

“I don’t know,” Alex says evenly, to hide the twinge of pain in his chest at Luke’s lamenting summation of what, exactly, is bothering him.

“You’re in the best position to find out. Take one for the team?”

Alex knows he’s blushing. “I, uh – we’re not really at that – I mean we only just –“

“So that’s not it, then,” Luke says, coming closer again to study Alex with a calm that’s new to him. Figures it took death to teach him patience.

Alex doesn’t know what about his stumbling, embarrassed evasion gave Luke the impression that his new relationship with Willie _isn’t_ the thing that’s stressing him out, which – it’s not, not really, but Luke shouldn’t be able to tell that.

“Not really.”

“So what’s up?”

And that’s a fair question. Alex should be thrilled; he should be celebrating or sitting there with a dopey smile like Luke does every time Julie leaves the room, not staring at a dartboard like it’s personally wronged him. He’s got the thing he always wanted.

Except that he hasn’t.

But he doesn’t really know how to say that.

His feet twitch with the urge to pace. His _model strut_ , Reggie calls it. But this isn’t something he has to think through, to walk through. This is just something he knows, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Bummer that _now_ is the time he learns how to stop worrying about things he can’t change and to just feel sad about them instead. “I guess it just hit me that like… who knows what our unfinished business is, right? Maybe we have to do it together; maybe that’s just a coincidence. But I’ve been thinking about it –“

“Stressing about it,” Luke corrects.

“Well, yeah. But it’s – the thing I wanted the most, probably even more than playing the Orpheum, was to just… be myself. Out in the open, no matter who could see. And now no one can see me.”

“Yeah, I know.” Luke sounds sad. On Alex’s behalf? Maybe it’s just because not being seen is hard for Luke, too. But Luke came to him; Luke knew something in this general area was bothering him. And Luke knew that it was bothering him back then, too, twenty-six years ago when he found Alex in this exact spot.

So Alex tries for honesty.

“You asked if I minded that I hadn’t really gotten to say it to you. And I did, kinda, but I thought there would be other people I could say it to later, and now I’ve gotten a second chance and I _still_ can’t say anything.” He laughs, and it’s kind of at the ridiculous situation they’re in but mostly at himself. “Anyone I even _think_ of telling knows before I tell them.”

Luke touches him again, patting him on the back, a little patronizing, but Alex can feel the comfort he intends hiding behind that joking exterior. None of them know how to make this better. “Well, you’re kind of an open book, dude.”

“ _You_ didn’t know,” Alex accuses. He can’t have. If he did, why did Alex have to go through all that to tell him?

“Yeah I did.”

Alex shakes his head, not ready to accept that he’s _always_ been this transparent. No pun intended. “But Bobby guessed it.”

“Yeah, because I was trying to be discreet in case that wasn’t it,” Luke says, rolling his eyes and taking Alex’s hand to tug him back towards the only other familiar piece of furniture, that garage-sale couch that looks so much nicer with throw pillows on it. Alex lets himself be tugged.

“How’d you know?” he says, settling beside Luke. It’s crazy to think that just a week ago he was sitting here with Julie, doing his best to act like he had his life together and could give her any sort of advice, and now here he is learning that he’s _never_ had it together.

“You had a crush on me.”

“No I didn’t.”

It’s a reflexive denial, part one million of the _I’m not into you guys, nope, not gonna try anything, please don’t make this weird_ campaign he started twenty-six years ago. He sort of thought that was over.

Luke laughs, shoving him. “Yeah, you did. When we were fifteen. I knew before you did.”

“ _How?”_

“You stopped looking me in the eye.” And oh, yeah. He did do that. He’d sort of hoped none of them would notice, but Luke’s always been more perceptive than he lets on. “You still do that, by the way; it was super obvious whenever you talked to Willie.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Alex grumbles.

Luke _sprawls._ He always has, but Alex was never the target of it. That was on purpose, of course, but it’s still weird to be on the receiving end now, crowded against the end of the couch because Luke is taking up the other three-quarters of it. If Alex were Reggie, he would push back, sprawl back, give as good as he got, but he’s not Reggie and he’s not used to this.

Speaking of which, where is Reggie? It’s not like him to stay out late, alone.

As if he can hear Alex’s thoughts, Luke says, casually, “I was kinda jealous, honestly. I watched you go through it with Bobby and Reggie, and I was pissed you were into _them_ but not me.”

This day has been _so_ surreal. “But you’re –“

“Super straight? Sexuality is fluid, Alex, get with the times.” And _that’s_ a sentence Alex would never, ever have heard Luke say when they were alive. It’s things like this that still take him by surprise, when he forgets that they’ve all changed, they’re all adapting. That he isn’t as alone as he thinks he is.

Luke grins, lopsided, and Alex’s world re-rights itself when Luke laughs. “Nah, it was more vanity than anything else.”

“You _are_ vain,” Alex agrees.

Luke kicks him in the leg, normal, casual Luke, and Alex thinks they’re back to smooth sailing. But then Luke’s face turns serious in a way it usually only does when he’s talking about music, and Alex thinks, great, we’re _still_ talking about feelings. “That thing I said to you, back then, about a coming out song –“

“You don’t have to.”

He would love that, really, he would, but it’s not his song to sing, anymore, and he can’t ask Julie to sing a coming out song for _him_ when she should get to choose when she wants to sing that song for herself. He just missed that boat, and that’s okay.

“No, see, I already did,” Luke says, earnest. “Not like, explicitly, but like – I remember when we were kids, and there’d be songs you liked but you’d never say why. So Julie helped me google ‘queer anthems’ and… I try to write the kind of songs you would have liked. That’s all.”

Huh. Turnabout is fair play, Alex guesses. Point Julie.

He’d rather think about how nice that was, on Julie’s part, because he can’t even begin to think about how much it means that Luke, who is so protective of his music and his lyrics, would give up a little bit of that control just to make Alex happy. And that he wouldn’t even _tell_ Alex, when he’s normally so proud of the gifts he gives people that he spoils them even before he gives them.

Alex doesn’t know how to thank him.

Luke mistakes his silence for nerves, which has always made _Luke_ nervous, and he starts to babble. “I know you didn’t get to come out to the people who mattered, and that sucks. But you _are_ saying it where people can hear you. And, I don’t know, I thought… maybe someday, if we get big enough again, some queer kid will hear you singing about being proud of who you are, and maybe they’ll be able to tell someone because of that.”

“Luke – ”

“Can I give you that hug you turned down twenty-six years ago now?”

Alex _is_ pretty into hugs these days.

“I only did because Bobby made a joke about it,” he admits.

“I forgot about that. Man, did he always suck?” Luke says, mouth twisting in anger for just a second like he’s conveniently forgotten that he _also_ sucked, just a little, for a few minutes right after it happened. But the moment passes and he brightens, turning his face toward the loft and raising his voice. “Hey, Reg.”

Reggie appears over the railing, and of _course._ They’re far too attached at the hip for this conversation to ever happen without Reggie. “Is it safe to come out? Sorry, bad joke,” he says, holding his hands up when Luke glares at him. “Luke told me he was gonna tell you and I just – I wanted to be here just in case, you know, if this is what did it. For you.”

That’s Reggie’s thing, isn’t it? That’s why if they go, they’re all going to go together. They’re family, and there’s no way Reggie is leaving this plane of existence without Alex and Luke by his side. Alex scoffs, to cover the sudden, squeezing fondness in his chest. He loves these guys so much. “If my unfinished business was a group hug, I think I’dve been out of here after the Orpheum.”

“Okay, fine, I also really like hugs and I’m not very good at asking for them,” Reggie huffs, jumping from the railing to land much more gracefully on the studio floor than Luke did the last time he tried. Turns out all those stage-jumps were good practice. “I have a lot of hangups around masculinity – probably ‘cause my dad was so on my case about it. I’m learning a lot from Carlos.”

“You are _so_ weird, dude,” Luke says, probably because that’s easier than asking what Reggie could possibly be learning from a thirteen-year-old he can’t even talk to. “Alright, let’s go, no jokes this time.”

This is perfect, Alex thinks, as Reggie sort of just… flings himself on top of them, landing uncomfortably on Alex’s knee, and as Luke reels him in with another arm around his shoulder. It’s like the puppy piles their parents used to find them in when they were just stupid kids, before they met Bobby and before they grew up and realized that wasn’t an okay thing to do anymore. It’s what he’s been missing for so long and didn’t even know he was.

“Reggie, are you _crying?”_ Luke asks.

“Shut up,” Reggie sniffs, because he totally is. “I just love you guys a lot.”

Alex doesn’t know how he could possibly say it back, because _love_ isn’t enough to express how _grateful_ he is, how much more this means to him than they can ever know.

The garage door opens, and he doesn’t have to try, because Julie says, “oh, sorry, I – I just wanted to ask how it went with Willie,” hesitant, like she knows this hug isn’t really one she gets to be a part of.

Luke does his stupid eyebrow thing, and Alex would never admit that Julie’s right, but it _is_ kind of cute. He’s thought it was cute ever since he was fifteen. Reggie is gearing up to make some kind of innuendo that Alex does _not_ need to hear any more than he wants _Julie_ to hear it, so he cuts Reggie off in the only way he knows how.

“It went great,” he says quietly. He knows he’s grinning like an idiot, but Julie grins back and that’s great too, that connection he has with her that’s just theirs, even if this hug isn’t.

Honesty is a hell of silencing tactic, but with his friends it’s only a matter of time.

“Hey, Julie,” Luke says, head lolling on Reggie’s shoulder and hand on Alex’s knee in a way that’s somehow not weird; how is it not weird? Everything is weird when you’re dead; maybe the goalposts have shifted. “Would you sing a coming out song for Alex if I wrote it?”

And because Julie is perfect, and because she fits into this quartet so well it’s like she was never not part of it, she says, “I think Alex should probably sing that one? But I’d definitely be down for a duet.”

 _“Sweet,”_ Luke says, “I was thinking it starts with twenty questions, and then Alex comes in with…” and he’s off, but even when Julie joins them on the couch his arm is still around Alex’s shoulders.

There's no way Alex can ever fully express his thanks, or say that he never could have hoped for this, when he was fifteen and hopelessly crushing on Luke or struggling through a game of twenty questions, but he can accept a hug and hope that speaks for him. So he does.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Words and Guitar" by Sleater-Kinney.
> 
> (Sleater-Kinney started in 1994 but really broke onto the scene in 1996; the lead singers were outed in 1995 as having dated during the early days of the band.)


End file.
